July 8, 2021 – September 18, 2021
STRUCTURE 02: Art Stays 2021
A Group Sculpture Exhibition at Ptuj’s Dominican Monastery
Dominican Monastery, Ptuj, Slovenia
STRUCTURE 02 formed the sculptural section of the nineteenth Art Stays Festival in Ptuj, Slovenia. Presented at the city’s Dominican Monastery from July through September 2021, the group exhibition brought Annalù together with Tamara Kvesitadze, Johannes Nielsen, Sasha Frolova, Tomaž Plavec and Milojka Drobne.
The festival’s wider theme, STRUCTURA, examined how forms are assembled, repeated and transformed through relationships between material, space and perception. Annalù’s organic constructions entered this discussion through works whose apparent fluidity conceals an exact process of layering, preservation and physical control.
Structure as a Living System
The 2021 edition of Art Stays treated structure as more than visible geometry. Across the festival, artists examined how separate elements depend upon one another and how an artwork can change identity when placed within a larger material or social system.
Annalù’s practice was particularly suited to this approach. Her sculptures often begin with recognizable natural fragments such as leaves, roots, wings or flowers, but these components are reconstructed through resin, glass, paper and pigment. The finished object appears organic without belonging fully to nature.
This tension makes structure both visible and concealed. Repeated elements reveal how the sculpture has been organized, while transparent layers obscure the exact boundary between surface, interior and surrounding space.
Within STRUCTURE 02, Annalù’s work could be read alongside very different sculptural approaches. Tamara Kvesitadze investigates movement and the changing human figure; Sasha Frolova works with inflatable and synthetic volumes; Johannes Nielsen extends the body through elongated bronze forms. The exhibition used those contrasts to show that structure can result from anatomy, material behavior, repetition or engineered transformation.
Sculpture in the Dominican Monastery
The Dominican Monastery introduced a historical structure into the exhibition before any artwork was installed. Its architecture is organized through weight, enclosure, rhythm and the accumulation of different periods of use.
Contemporary sculpture entered that environment without neutralizing it. Transparent and reflective materials reacted to windows, stone surfaces and changing daylight, while freestanding works altered routes through rooms originally designed for very different functions.
For Annalù, this context emphasized the relationship between suspension and support. Forms that appear to float or grow still depend on carefully controlled internal construction. The apparent freedom of the final sculpture is made possible by an underlying technical order.
STRUCTURE 02 was produced within the 19th Art Stays Festival under the direction of Jernej Forbici and Marika Vicari. The sculpture exhibition at the Dominican Monastery was developed in collaboration with Kornfeld Gallery in Berlin and Punto sull’Arte in Varese.
By placing Annalù within a multidisciplinary international festival, the presentation connected her material research to a broader discussion about how objects, bodies and environments are built and how they change through coexistence.
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